The Canadian Press reported Thursday that survivors would receive some $800 million as compensation, or between $25,000 and $50,000 for each claimant. CBC could not independently confirm that figure. Read the rest of this entry →

Sixties Scoop survivors and supporters gather for a demonstration at a Toronto courthouse on Tuesday, August 23, 2016. Scores of aboriginals from across Ontario rallied in Toronto today ahead of a landmark court hearing on the so-called ’60s Scoop. (Michelle Siu/Canadian Press)

by Tu Thanh Ha, The Globe and Mail, Feb 14, 2017

After a legal battle that lasted nearly a decade, a judge has ruled that the federal government is liable to thousands of Ontario natives who were removed from their communities and adopted into non-indigenous families in what became known as the Sixties Scoop.

Wayne Snellgrove, centre, with his adoptive family. Snellgrove was one of thousands of aboriginal kids forced from their homes and adopted into mostly non-Native families during the 1960s to 80s. (Submitted by Wayne Snellgrove)

Some estimate more than 20,000 aboriginal kids adopted by mostly non-native families

CBC News, June 18, 2015

Aboriginal adoptees forced from their families by the Canadian government in the Sixties Scoop are expected to receive what is believed to be the first public government apology on Thursday.

Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger is set to deliver the apology, which the province has been working on for months alongside affected adoptees.

The Sixties Scoop is the name given to the period of time between the 1960s and ’80s when thousands of aboriginal children were placed with mostly non-native adoptive families. Read the rest of this entry →

Child welfare agents took Christine Merasty from her mother’s arms shortly after her birth at a hospital on Christmas Day in 1970.

It was supposed to be a six-month arrangement to allow her mother — a residential school survivor — to get her life together after living on the streets of downtown Winnipeg.

But child-welfare workers were already showing the infant’s picture to prospective white families for adoption. Christine was taken to her new home in the rural Manitoba town of Bowsman when she was four months old.

“They didn’t give my family a chance. They just wanted to remove an Indian child into a white home,” Merasty says. “That wasn’t right. I had a family searching for me for 20 years, wanting me. They would have wanted me in 1970.”